ASRock Rack 1U12LW-C2550 - 12 bay 1U w/ C2550

[MiniKnight]

Before getting the ASUS one I looked at the ASRock model and saw this on ebay:

ASRock Rack 1U12LW C2550 Intel Avoton C2550 DDR3 V 2GbE 1U Rackmount Server | eBay

That isn't too bad really at $923 for a prebuilt 12 bay NAS.

I wish Norco made one of these though.

Assuming you are curious - the ASRock C2550 board with Marvell controllers:
$269.99 w/ free shipping: ASRock C2550D4I Intel Avoton C2550 2 4GHz DDR3 SATA3 V 2GbE Mini ITX | eBay

If you can live without the extra SATA ports and only 2 lan that price differential buys about 2TB more storage.

 

[Diavuno]

for a couple hundred more you can get a supermicro, but thats hot swap, better chip, and redundent psu.

 

[rubylaser]

for a couple hundred more you can get a supermicro, but thats hot swap, better chip, and redundent psu.

I haven't seen a similar machine from Supermicro. Could you please share the model number, because we are looking for a 1U storage box for work and this seems ideal. I've seen their hotswap 4 bay SuperServer with the Avoton processor, but never a 12 bay version.

 

[Kristian]

This should be the server mentioned:

Supermicro | Products | SuperStorage Servers | 1U | 5018A-AR12L

 

[MiniKnight]

That is it. What I do not understand about that platform is why only 2 network ports. The board picture looks to have the Marvell PHY and the i354 is quad capable.

Maybe not everyone wants quad network but what an opportunity missed. I am sure there is a good reason somewhere for not having this.

 

[rubylaser]

This should be the server mentioned:

Supermicro | Products | SuperStorage Servers | 1U | 5018A-AR12L

Thanks! I can only seem to find it at ACME Mircosystems. It costs $400 more than the ASRock System and seems to be pre-order only at this point, but does have hot swap bays, an 8 core Avoton, and redundant PSUs. Does anyone have a recommendation of a vendor to purchase this through?

 

[Diavuno]

Thanks Kristina, that's the server I was referring to!

Mini knight I talked to my Supermicro rep... It has to do with available PCIE lanes, but they wanted to keep 4x for various options, incase customers wanted a fiber nic etc...
Or rarely a HBA, for large cold storage 2gbe may be enough.

I can resell cheaper then that, and I have them on hand. sitting on my own pair right now!

 

[JSchuricht]

starshooter10, if you can still get the 5018A-AR12L from Supermicro I may be interested. Every vendor I have tried is only willing to sell me one as a complete system with RAM and drives due to some weird stipulation by Supermicro.

 

[Patrick]

starshooter10, if you can still get the 5018A-AR12L from Supermicro I may be interested. Every vendor I have tried is only willing to sell me one as a complete system with RAM and drives due to some weird stipulation by Supermicro.

Another possibility (but more expensive): New Supermicro SSG 5018A AR12L Superstorage with A1SA7 2750F Motherboard | eBay

 

[JSchuricht]

Actually I kept trying different venders and finally ended up at wiredzone. UPS says it will be delivered Friday, shipping directly from SM. Thanks for the suggestion tho.

 

[pgh5278]

Hello, did you receive the SSG 5018a ? How does it look in real life? What OS will you run on it?
Thanks Peter

 

[vikingboy]

How could I plumb in a 10gbe card (usually 8x pcie) into the SM boards which seem to have x4 slots (x8 physical). Seems like I'm misunderstanding something or Asrock have a key advantage with their 12 bay 1u server which has a slot capable of supporting 10gbe cards properly.

 

[Diavuno]

The cpus should have the same number of slots, so either asrock shorted something else or the supermicro has extra chips (ipmi maybe?)

But remember pci-e 2.0 is 500MB/s bi-directional, totaling 2 gigabytes each way.

10 gigabits /8 = roughly 1.25 gigabytes...

In theory you should be able to fully saturate a single 10gbe pipe, including any overhead.

A dual port 10gbe card will fully saturate the BUS, but can your drives max a single 10gbe pipe? Not unless you have ssd's.

A 8x card will run fine in the 8x (4 electrical) slot... I do this often, never had an issue.

Actually, I'm typing on my desktop that has 3 cards like that, 2 AMD Radeon's and my LSI card.

 

[vikingboy]

Thanks, thats useful info. I didn't how the lanes were applied to a card and pair of ports, i.e did each port see half the number of lanes or did 1 port see all 4.

 

[Diavuno]

Glad to help!

Generally speaking the cards chip talks to the port(s)
The pcie lanes talk to that chip... Limited lanes will limit bandwidth but still works.
I've actually run almost every type of card in open ended 1x slots.
Not recommended but possibly. My desktop has 2 gfx cards (16x) both in the open ended 8x slots!